This concluding chapter reflects on the book’s collected works that encapsulate, in the Aristotelian sense, gesture’s efficient causes (i.e., mechanisms that stimulate gesture) and its final causes (i.e., purposes that gesture serves). We conclude that gesture is multifunctional, operating on all levels of analysis (biological, psychological, and social levels), in all time frames (moment-to-moment, ontogenetic, and evolutionary time) and under many different discourse requirements. One over-arching theme emerges. Gesture functions simultaneously for both its producers and its observers, and thus provides a dual function that shapes thinking and language in the producer, which, in turn, shapes thinking and language in the observer – a process that underlies how we share ideas and create community.
Article outline
Gesture functions at many levels of analysis
Neurological evidence
Psychological evidence
Social evidence
Gesture functions in all time frames
Moment-to-moment
Developmental time frame
Evolutionary time frame
Methods for understanding the functions of gesture
Manipulating the presence or absence of gesture
Variation in context
Variation in task
Gesture supports speech for the producer as well as the observer
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